It’s a busy day – the Explorer 2 Crew Vehicle and Duna Spaceport will begin their journey to Duna! The first mission to Duna will likely be the most complicated, as there are two seperate missions running concurrently – the first, delivering a spaceport and a reusable lander to Duna orbit. The second, the crew themselves on Explorer 2!

Explorer 2 departs as well – and performs the docking and transposition manuever to let the crew gain access to the much more comfortable Habitat Module that will be their home on the journey to Duna!

The new Antenna installed by Chrisnic is a tight fit, but appears to be performing well!

Meanwhile, the Duna Surveyor will soon be approaching Duna, to start mapping the surface for a future landing!

KSEA commissions the development of several new Surveyor class deep space probes – Neidon Surveyor, Urlum Surveyor, Sarnus Surveyor, and the Jool Surveyor. Like Duna Surveyor, these deep space probes are designed to map the surface of deep space bodies to allow a more scientific approach to exploring space!

Duna Spaceport is ready to go! The station and the Duna Research Lander wait in a 100k parking orbit for their transfer to Mun… in exactly 399 days! It’s a long wait, but it’s needed to maximize the available fuel for such a long range mission!

KSEA excitedly announces that is their goal to land Kerbals on Duna – and the team has already been picked! Mitster, the commander of the Explorer 1 mission is chosen as the most experienced Kerbal at the KSC, while Dunwin and Kimmy are chosen as the brightest of the new recruits! Everyone is very excited at the new Mission Patches too!

“Wow – what an awesome patch! I can’t wait to blast off to Duna!”

-Mitster

Explorer 2 won’t be the first craft to visit Duna however… Frontier 6 is currently in orbit of Duna, and has revealed interesting data about the red world of Duna, including multiple dips into the atmosphere that have indicated a landing is quite possible… however the actual content of the surface is still unknown.

The mission to Duna will be done in three parts:

The Duna Surveyor has already been launched, and will enter a polar orbit of Duna, mapping the biomes and charting altitudes of terrains. Surveyor was launched with a lot of fuel, so the departure to Duna will be in just 60 days! This will give Duna Surveyor a good 30 days to map at least some of Duna before Explorer 2 arrives!

A space station, to be called Duna Spaceport, along with a lander, will be launched into an equatorial orbit of Duna, providing a home in space, and fuel reserves for multiple landings. The station will launch with the Research Lander stowed above it in the fairing, and move to its proper docking port once the station arrives at Duna. Besides an onboard science lab, the Duna Spaceport will feature some of the most impressive deep space habitats available – the Observation Lounge for the crew to relax in is one of the most notable features of the station, with its giant windows!

The Duna Spaceport Research Lander is a re-usable lander, designed to land on Duna and return to the Spaceport to refuel. The vehicle carries an array of all the most sophisticated scientific instruments known to Kerbal-kind!

A crew vehicle and habitat module will be the last component, taking a crew of three in an Aurora Crew Vehicle, which for simplicity sake is being called the Crew Vehicle Mk. 6) with a habitat module similar to those found on the KSS and other space stations stowed below. Once in orbit a docking and transposition maneuver will be undertaken, and the craft will travel to Duna, docking with the Space Station there! The crew vehicle and habitat section will return to Kerbin, while the station and lander will will remain in orbit for future missions.

Explorer 2 has led to the development of several new technologies and innovations. The innovative use of existing Aurora-era technologies combined with the habitats developed for the Orbital Station above Kerbin, Mun, and Minmus, and the utterly massive Sarnux X Launch Vehicle, which will claim the title of “most powerful machine ever built” upon its completion!

Dunwin is informed of his place on the mission while he’s on-mission, on the surface of Mun: